I was anxious to get started working at the Canadian Centre For Victims of Torture - it was one of my top choices. As one can gather from the name, important things were being done for a very disadvantaged group of people at this organization, and I immediately felt like it would be nice to make a difference for them. I wanted more from this part of the course than just another mark. I wanted to do something that would give real benefits to real people I meet - and I believed CCVT would give me that opportunity.
I contacted Teresa, the head of organizing programs and volunteer work at CCVT, and was brought up to speed on Friday morning on what my work would entail. She wanted to set up a new program on Fridays for group of people new to Canada, primarily African refugees, for an absolute-beginners course on everyday computer use. I was then introduced to some of the reasons CCVT wanted to have this program. The reason for this group’s lack of knowledge of computers was obvious - their digital divide was because they faced persecution, abuse and poverty in the war-torn nation that they were from and would have never had opportunity to access a computer. They were to start with basic typing programs such as Typer Shark and Typing Tutor to teach them how to input into a computer. If there was progress and continued interest from the students (always a concern in these types of drop in programs, she says), hopefully in the long term they could get on the internet and do things such as Skype with their relatives or listen to music - basically to have the knowledge to exploit some the luxuries of modern computing that we take for granted and they never thought possible.
She warned me that these refugees, on top of English being a new language, had never used a computer before and I would probably need to start from teaching them how to turn a monitor on. She said it would be extremely basic material to be teaching, but it will be difficult to do so. I said, no problem - for this was exactly what I wanted to be doing.
